Re: [Theory] 2014 is PS Home's final year

All the negativity about Home's future is depressing to say the least.

.....Yet at the same time, a lot of it is valid concerns, and recently I've found it harder to enjoy Home as much as I used to with the lack of any noteworthy content to me, the errors that crop up every now and again, and the hackers/freezers. As a guide, I won't lie, it's been hard to enjoy that role when there are trolls hacking the gear and messing with innocent users. All the concern, all the negativity... if anyone's been wondering where I've been lately, that's had a lot to it; it's depressed me, as a constant supporter of Home, so I've found myself taking to lurking here (because lots of threads are so down these days) and hacking away at my backlog on the PS3 itself. All I can hope for is something to come up soon that changes the apparent direction Home's headed, because its painful to see.

A very (very) basic LBP level... by me. http://lbp.me/v/pj9eqq(PS: Blank Friend Requests WILL be deleted!)

Re: [Theory] 2014 is PS Home's final year

I started a 2nd act a couple of years ago, ONLY for self gifting with the Lockwood Machine. Over the past 4 months or so, I have been going from space to space replaying games and trying to get 100% rewards achievement on this account, I am surprised how much fun this nostalgic tour has been. It has given me a shot of energetic fun.

The recent weekend of double XP at Novus Prime kept me playing for hours. I am in no hurry this time around to buy the perks to speed up rewards completion. I am having too much fun this time around to be in a hurry. My main account inventory is so full now, I am rather glad to slow down my spending.

Re: [Theory] 2014 is PS Home's final year

I take a very realistic view of things. A lot of the Home Doom threads come down to personal concerns:

Home is failing because they won't bring back the space that I want!

Home is failing because of freezers!

Home is failing because the thing I want was delayed!

That's not at all what I'm talking about. The 100% legitimate complaint is ISE and the chilling effect it has on developers. I'm sure there are many reasons why Peakvox has chosen not to bring Monsters over here, and I'm sure that the high cost of localization plus the fact that users would just steal content meant to be unlocked through purchases played a role in that decision. Why would they localize that content when they know they can make mobile games at a lower risk?

My assessment of Home's future is based on five years as a user, including a few spent checkng every single update in detail. What we're getting now is a far cry from what we got one or two years ago. There are three possible reasons for this:

1. A major core update is on the way and content is on hold.

2. There's a massive backlog in QA.

3. Developers no longer want to take the risk on complex content.

I've seen all of the above scenarios over the last five years. I also recognize the importance of Challenges and old content getting fixed...it's not as if Home has been totally forgotten, it just seems that resources are going toward making sure that a smaller selection of content is functional, perhaps with an eye toward a future application and how it might work. From what I've been able to gather, the Cutthroats fix was a major undertaking and a significant sign of support from Sony.

But...

Home is a five-year-old application that launched on two-year-old technology. It's a Generation 2 application running in a Generation 4 world. Look across the history of gaming, including online MMOs, and you just don't see things sticking around that long. Yes, Warcraft, which has updated several times and yes, Second Life, but that's become a prisoner of its own outdated technology.

At some point, Sony needs to shut down this Home and move on to whatever's next. From what I've seen so far this year, we're at that point. There are no more unique, major events coming. There are no more major game spaces like Mercia or Novus Prime coming. What's here can be expanded and updated as needed, but what's next is going to happen somewhere else.

Re: [Theory] 2014 is PS Home's final year

My assessment of Home's future is based on five years as a user, including a few spent checkng every single update in detail. What we're getting now is a far cry from what we got one or two years ago. There are three possible reasons for this:

1. A major core update is on the way and content is on hold.

2. There's a massive backlog in QA.

3. Developers no longer want to take the risk on complex content.

But...

Home is a five-year-old application that launched on two-year-old technology. It's a Generation 2 application running in a Generation 4 world. Look across the history of gaming, including online MMOs, and you just don't see things sticking around that long. Yes, Warcraft, which has updated several times and yes, Second Life, but that's become a prisoner of its own outdated technology.

At some point, Sony needs to shut down this Home and move on to whatever's next. From what I've seen so far this year, we're at that point. There are no more unique, major events coming. There are no more major game spaces like Mercia or Novus Prime coming. What's here can be expanded and updated as needed, but what's next is going to happen somewhere else.

im going to focus on these two parts here Hearitwow

Ok im sorry about the assessment you must know something we dont care to share some information with us?

as for the last bit of home shutting down! I am going to agree Mercia was a total joke and disaster! Novus Prime was innovative and new at the time althou it did get a bit repeditive on the other hand Home Tycoon is ok if you like Sim City type games! one other thing is i have no idea what you are talking about here man. Home will have to shut down at some point but I stil think it has a good year or two left in it for the Devs to do cash grabs!

"Home is a five-year-old application that launched on two-year-old technology. It's a Generation 2 application running in a Generation 4 world. Look across the history of gaming, including online MMOs, and you just don't see things sticking around that long. Yes, Warcraft, which has updated several times and yes, Second Life, but that's become a prisoner of its own outdated technology?

technically the ps3 is the 3rd generation of the playstation franchise and i am pretty sure we are well into the 8th or 9th Gen as far as the Home consoles are! but i think what you are trying to say is that It's an old app that cant run on new tech? idk

Re: [Theory] 2014 is PS Home's final year

This is the theory I have had ever since it was first announced that they were planning to stop making new content for the JPN and Asia regions:

1.) Sony management sat down and crunched the numbers in regards to PS Home's profitability. They came to the realization that the overall profit margin for Home was quite thin, and decided it was time to develop an exit strategy.

2.) When reviewing the numbers by region, they noted that JPN and Asia were performing worse than the EU and NA regions. They theorized that they could continue to pull a small profit from each region for a period of time by drastically reducing the overhead (which of course includes paying third parties for new content). Home users would continue to purchase enough "old" virtual goods to sustain a profit for a while, with minimal effort on Sony's end.

This is what I believe happened in the past. The remaining steps are my theory regarding the present and future.

3.) Sony would closely monitor the performance of JPN and Asia as they continued on with no new content. Once a region's profit margins became small enough they would soon start losing money, they would announce the closure of said region(s). The notice Sony will give users in advance of said closure will likely be short.

4.) Sony will use the data from the JPN and Asia regions to determine a timeline for the exit strategy for the EU and NA regions.

The expected time for the complete shutdown of Home is very hard to estimate. I'm unsure how well the Sony people can extrapolate their data, with so many variables that will arise. However, I do personally find Tarazuma's December date to be very possible, and I also find his/her theory that EU and NA will both shut down at the same time to be very plausible as well.

Re: [Theory] 2014 is PS Home's final year

<snip>"Home is a five-year-old application that launched on two-year-old technology. It's a Generation 2 application running in a Generation 4 world. Look across the history of gaming, including online MMOs, and you just don't see things sticking around that long. Yes, Warcraft, which has updated several times and yes, Second Life, but that's become a prisoner of its own outdated technology?

technically the ps3 is the 3rd generation of the playstation franchise and i am pretty sure we are well into the 8th or 9th Gen as far as the Home consoles are! but i think what you are trying to say is that It's an old app that cant run on new tech? idk<snip>

You're correct in your argument technically, but I think what HIW is referring is to the fact that the genesis of Home began as an online space via the PlayStation 2 game The Getaway. In that parlance, his assessment is likewise correct.

Re: [Theory] 2014 is PS Home's final year

Ann beat me to it. Home was conceived/developed initially on the PS2, then ported to the PS3. It's old tech, but it still runs quite well. That it lasted as long as it has is impressive, but most of the flaws that people complain about are existential. They cannot be fixed without a ground-up rewrite of the code, which will not happen on the PS3 at this point.

As far as what I know about Home development, I used to talk to developers and one Home manager quite a bit. I've even had something that I designed published in Home, and followed that process through several setbacks and delays. I don't know the precise details of every step, but I understand in broad terms how the process works, how things get developed and how they get published.

As a rule in the past, there have been two major reasons for light content updates from a developer:

1. The developer is working on something big, like Mercia.

2. There is a core update coming, and developers are creating things to take advantage of it.

We haven't had a core update that significantly changes Home's capabilities in a while; however, it's possible that they're looking to patch some exploits and may have asked developers to hold off on certain types of items.

We also haven't had any announcements of anything big since Digital Leisure's western space. Development of major games and spaces takes six months to a year, and developers generally want to tease content to keep people interested. Since the September 2013 article on the EU Blog, we haven't heard of any major initiatives from Home's developers.

This sends some pretty strong signals that Home devs are doing other things. Lockwood is developing Avakin. O-Two is focused on mobile games. Granzella is working on a Vita title. nDreams is making a PS4 game. These are small studios, and if they're directing resources away from Home, that says a lot about Home's future.

As I said many times in the past, the time to start thinking about Home shutting down is the time when content starts to dwindle. That's 2014 so far.